Thanks to billionaire’s legal battle, we now know a lot more about how the super-rich work
Tom PeckThe IndependentFebruary 16, 2012

According to the High Court, Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the spheres of finance, business and politics, is indeed “puppet master” to the Baron of Hartlepool and Foy.

The banker and Bullingdon boy has lost his libel case against the Daily Mail, which he sued for “substantial damages” over its account of his and Mr Mandelson’s extraordinary trip to Russia in January 2005.

Mr Rothschild claimed he was subjected to “sustained and unjustified” attacks in the May 2010 article, which portrayed him as a “puppet master”, dangling his friend Lord Mandelson in front of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to ease the passage of colossal business deals.

… It began on Mr Rothschild’s private jet from the World Economic Forum in Davos to Moscow, where they met Mr Deripaska, the aluminium plant manager who became the richest oligarch of them all, and continued on Mr Deripaska’s private jet to his chalet in Siberia, where “to beat jet lag” they were whipped with birch leaves before plunging themselves into icy water â€“ a traditional Siberian banya.